Civic duty

If you follow me on Instagram (@lovelindsaywilcox), this is old news, but we bought a new car on Saturday! It's a 2008 Honda Civic and the newest car we've ever owned, so we are pretty excited about it.

Unfortunately, it is also a stick shift — and since I never learned to properly drive one (my dad had no patience to teach me and we gave up when I was 15), I won't be driving this around until Andrew shows me the ropes.

As for the other Honda that was all alone in small-town Idaho? It's getting a new transmission and should be good as new by the end of the week. It'll be nice to stop carpooling with my co-worker and borrowing my mother-in-law's car.

I hope you're having a good week! This week is already shaping up to be much better for me.

With one Accord

Wow. I am just so funny with the blog titles lately! Not. If that fabulous headline didn't give it away, I got a new car last Tuesday -- yes, the day after I sold my little Cabrio and my heart was breaking. I have a talent for selling cars (and no patience for shopping for new ones).

It's a 2004 Honda Accord, and it has a killer stereo, power seats, a nice interior, massive trunk and plenty of room for hauling stuff around -- eventually. It also has a V6 engine, which may get me into trouble soon. :)

In other news, my parents and youngest sibling, Reggie, came down Friday night to visit us! It was an abbreviated trip because my mom had to be back on Sunday to teach her YW lesson, but it was nice to have them here. We didn't do much, but here are a few of the things we did.

- Stayed up until 1 a.m. watching Napoleon Dynamite
- Slept in for hours Saturday morning
- Went to the fabric store to fix my sewing machine
- Bought a bunch of secondhand children's books for my collection and my mom's elementary library
- Had yummy turkey burgers that Andrew barbecued
- Went to another barbecue with some friends and ate too much seviche and guacamole
- Ate giant milkshakes from Iceberg

I miss my family already, but I'll see them again in another month because my brother, Randall, is getting married July 30. This is crazy to me. Everyone is growing up!

Goodbye, Cabrio!

After a year and four months of bliss, I sold my adorable little Cabrio yesterday. I have been thinking about it for a while, and I decided that it was better to sell it now in order to get something more practical while we have some money -- before it's a necessity when we're expecting a child in the next few years.

That all makes me sound very sensible, but the truth is, I'm kind of sad about it. That little car has been perfect for me, and I'm really going to miss it when the buyer comes to pay for it and take it away tomorrow. It wasn't perfect, especially since Andrew spent hours yesterday replacing the right axel before the buyer came to look at it, and it was really loud with the top up when we drove it on the highway. But it was red and small and sporty and simple, and I loved having the car I'd always wanted when I was 16.

It also means that starting tomorrow evening, I am out of transportation and have to start car shopping again -- a process I absolutely HATE. But this will allow us to get something a little bigger with four doors and a hard top that gets better gas mileage, too.

So I've posted a picture of my car here for you all to see and remember. I know it's silly to get so attached to a car, but I want to look back on it later and remember the good times. Goodbye, Cabrio.

Ridin' along in my automobile

Goodbye, sad silver car. Helloooooo.......bright, shiny red Volkswagen Cabriolet!

This past week was quite an eventful one -- and a bit sad in many ways. My car, which I blogged about earlier as having been in and out of the shop, entered the shop for its last time. The head gasket on the engine is having problems, which essentially means that coolant is leaking into the engine and destroying it. I can't even drive my car 15 minutes without it overheating, and now this worthless piece of metal is just sitting in front of my apartment.

It's sad, really. I have not even had that car for 2 years, and I had a lot of good memories in it -- driving around Salt Lake City when I lived completely on my own for the first time, taking college roommates grocery shopping, driving to Montana and Yellowstone with my family. It was perfect for me -- and after all the money I put into it, it can't even drive me safely to work.

Enter my NEW CAR - a 2001 VW Cabriolet!

When I was 16 and wanted to buy my first car, all I could dream about was a Volkswagen Cabriolet. It was small, it was cute -- and it was also usually a stick-shift (which I couldn't drive) and "driven hard and put away wet," as my dad puts it. We looked all over East Idaho for a Cabriolet I would look cute in, putting the top down and showing off my bald head (you can't always have hair to whip around your face, you know), and we settled for my white Chrysler LeBaron convertible instead.

Now, nearly seven years later, I am the proud owner of a cute new car that even chirps at me when I lock it and flashes its lights. I hop in it and instantly feel happier. It's got a killer stereo that lets me crank my Weezer up, heated leather seats and a gas gauge that works. It's even my favorite color!

I guess sometimes we don't get what we want. I never wanted a car that would overheat and cop out at only 125,000 miles. I never wanted to go car shopping in a rush because my car was completely worthless. And I never wanted to have to do safety and emissions tests and find a new car insurance company because I no longer live in Idaho. But life doesn't give us a choice.

The door is shut on another car and on another part of my life -- I will officially surrender my Idaho plates tomorrow, and I feel like part of my identity is going with them (I know it's ridiculous and dramatic, but I do). But there's always a window open -- and right now, it's the window on my lovely little car.